It's apparently browser engine day today. After Mozilla and Samsung announcing Servo, Google has just announced it's forking WebKit into Blink. Like WebKit, Blink will be open source, and it will also be used by other browser makers - most prominently, Opera has already announced it's not using WebKit, but Blink. Update:Courtesy of MacRumors, this graph illustrates how just how much Google contributed to WebKit. Much more than I thought. Also, Chrome developer Alex Russell: "To make a better platform faster, you must be able to iterate faster. Steps away from that are steps away from a better platform. Today's WebKit defeats that imperative in ways large and small. It's not anybody's fault, but it does need to change. And changing it will allow us to iterate faster, working through the annealing process that takes a good idea from drawing board to API to refined feature."

Well, no... quite clearly, one or two Google/Chromium devs are arguing with an Apple/Webkit2 dev over the multiprocess extensions. The Apple guy was actually part of the process and has first hand knowledge of the rational behind Webkit2, the Chromium guys are less well informed on the situation. I'm pretty much going to believe the guy who was actually part of the decision as to why it was made, and both the Chrome/Googlers conceded anyway.